Episode 5: Benchmarking for tax-exempt hospital systems

Today’s podcast episode explores experiences with benchmarking for tax exempt hospital systems. Such health systems use Schedule H on the Form 990 to report on the percentage of community benefit the hospital provides to the community, which helps justify their tax-exempt status. While there is no set minimum percentage required, the public nature of the information reported, coupled with its significance to a health system’s tax status, means that this topic is an important one for tax-exempt hospitals.

Topics addressed include:

• What community benefit benchmarking surveys for tax-exempt hospital systems are designed to do and why are they important
• What some of the benefits are to health systems that participate in such benchmarking projects
• How the COVID-19 pandemic impacted findings in these benchmarking surveys